Hmm, needs more thought.

SPEECH-DRIVEN IMPLICIT QUERIES. A wearable computer can assist
human-human interaction by monitoring keywords in the conversation
and suggesting relevant information, which will be presented in the
background (visual, monophonic audio, spatially-located audio). A
limited-vocabulary speaker-dependent speech engine recognizes names
and keywords associated with personal information management while
the wearer talks to other people. For example, the user might say,
"Let me look at my schedule for Tuesday." The system will recognize
"TUESDAY" and display a link for this Tuesday's schedule. The user
can then key in further input or use structured voice commands to
navigate through the data. To avoid confusion with the ongoing
human-human conversation, human-computer interaction should be
structured and clearly separate. (*Note*: I think I want to work on
this for my PhD. Implicit queries for personal information
management.)

ONLINE INTERACTION, OFFLINE DICTATION. A wearable computer can be
used to record everything you say so that you can process it later.
The speech stream from a directional microphone includes both
dialogue with the wearable computer and dialogue with other
entities. Online use involves limited-vocabulary speech recognition.
The full speech stream can be stored on the hard disk and tagged on
the fly with markers for later transcription using a
large-vocabulary speech recognition engine. The post-processing of
the text stream can be performed off-line and need not be
real-time.

EXPLICIT QUERIES: IR, TEXT SUMMARIZATION. Explicit information
retrieval with text summarization is necessary in order to deal with
information overload. Both exact and fuzzy searches need to be
supported. Topics may need to be mapped using an ontology in order
to take advantage of communal knowledge or search through personal
information. Output needs to be summarized; browsing through a
webpage to find an answer is inefficient and requires too much
attention. However, explicit queries against personal data stores
cannot take advantage of the redundancy of the Web, and the
wearable computer will need fuzzy search capabilities. (This is hard!)

1. Wearable computing article

So you want to get into wearable computing? Surprisingly, you don't
need a big budget to get started, and there are a lot of applications
that you can work on. You can start out by playing around with ideas
on a desktop computer, testing them on a phone or a phone emulator,
and then building your very own wearable. Here are some links and
project ideas to help you explore this exciting new field of computer
science.

Project ideas

"Gimik planner"

Develop an application that allows you to access movie schedules, mall
sales, and your friends' schedules in an integrated gimik planner that
will let you quickly and easily plan your next outing.

Augmented memory

You can use a wearable computer to store and look up a lot of
information. For example, you could refer to your address book when
asked for someone's number, or you can bring up your school notes in
order to answer a question. Wireless Internet access allows you to
search the Internet for answers to questions. If you hook up a webcam
to a laptop or wearable computer, then you can use it to capture video
or still images. You can store the images for later reference or even
do face recognition.

Alternative user interfaces

The desktop paradigm of windows-icons-menu-pointer (WIMP) is not
appropriate for wearables because it demands too much concentration
and precision. Alternative user interfaces should consider the
limitations of a wearable computing platform - small screen (or no
screen at all), limited input, and low priority. You don't need a
wearable computer to start experimenting with alternative interfaces -
you can try out wild ideas on a desktop and see which are worth taking
to the next level.

Speech synthesizer for text messages

txt u l8r! l0l

Normal speech synthesizers read text messages literally ("t ex t u l
eight r l zero l"). Text-to-speech systems used by people without
cellphones and blind people have a hard time with text messages. A
speech synthesizer that can deal with the abbreviations commonly used
in text messages will make it easier for these people to receive text
messages.

Keyboards

Keyboards for wearable computers need to be compact, portable, and
easy to use. If you want to make your own keyboard, take a look at
these pages:

Speech recognition

Speech recognition is another potential input method for wearable
computing. Many speech recognition engines today need you to speak
with an American accent and speech recognition is confused by
background noise. However, speech recognition is still a useful way to
get input from the user. You can try integrating speech recognition
into your applications or even work on improving speech recognition,
particularly for Filipino.

Accessibility

People with disabilities can use wearable computers to do things that
they can't normally do. For example, a speech synthesizer hooked up to
a cellphone can allow blind people to read text messages. A wearable
computer can also help people communicate even if they can't speak.

I'd love to hear about any questions, comments, suggestions or links that you might have. Your comments will not be posted on this website immediately, but will be e-mailed to me first. You can use this form to get in touch with me, or e-mail me at [email protected] .

Page: Wearable Computing

Updated: 2004-11-21

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